'Proof' Jamestown settlers turned to cannibalism

BBC ^ | May 1, 2013 | Jane O'Brien

[Altariel]

Newly discovered human bones prove the first permanent English settlers in North America turned to cannibalism over the cruel winter of 1609-10, US researchers have said.

Scientists found unusual cuts consistent with butchering for meat on human bones dumped in a rubbish pit.

The four-century-old skull and tibia of a teenage girl in James Fort, Virginia, were excavated from the dump last year.

James Fort, founded in 1607, was the earliest part of the Jamestown colony.

[muawiyah]

There's a climatological cycle that let's us have big droughts somewhere in North America just about every 70 to 80 years. Sometimes the drought linger from one end to the other ~ sometimes they'll be short, sweet and last only a couple of years, or maybe only in one quadrant seriously. China follows the same pattern and they have records going back thousands of years regarding the drought cycle.

Regarding fishing, that's a rather salty diet. Their problem was fresh water ~ not fish; but game was in short supply; the Indians had moved upstream for fresh water and were a long way away from Jamestwn.

Little went on in the East Coast area until about 1620 ~ and then settlers came to many places, indians attacked, etc. Europe prepared to plunge into the 30 years war ~ just all sorts of stuff.

[kitchen]

Evidence of the first rugby teams in the New World.

[bakeneko]

BBC reporting this? Well known in any history book of colonial america you wish to look at.

Shocked they are, to discover this...when there are honor killings, gentital mutilation, sanctioned wifebeatings going on in their own country now under color of their law.

Sorry BBC GFY

[fso301]

In former times, a crop failure of some sort would bring on famine with it’s accompanying cannibalism.

[tsomer]

Thanks for the info.

I wonder if it was related to solar activity. Do these episodes correlate with sun-spots?

I’m not sure about the dates, but its generally believed that the first English settlers arrived just after the native population had drastically declined. I always understood that this was due to disease, but it seems the drought might have been a factor.

[Vendome]

There was a story but, there were also a couple of other tales from people who ran away from the colony, escaping back to England.

The tales were suspect and there are records of cannibalism from the settlers and no one was ever named who might have resorted to this as a last resort.

[eldoradude]

Didn’t some of the settlers write about a man who murdered his pregnant wife and ate her? A colonial Gosnell.

Rats and mice will eat their children in times of hunger.

Wonder what the demographics will be in urban areas after a famine...post-birth abortion bbq? In the zombie apocalypse the zombies will be the hungry rats from the cities.

[muawiyah]

The native population probably languished in misery from about 1541 to 1620 ~ and then well, just as the Europeans did well, right on up to 1646 when what seems to have been a hanta-smallpox-T b-etc epidemic wiped everybody out ~ or at least 95% of everybody.

The solar sunspot cycles are 11 years for half a cycle. A full cycle is about 22 or 23 years. The 80 year cycle seems to be linked to the basic sun spot cycle in the sense of having a similar cause but a longer periodicity.

I've found the 80 year cycle to be useful in working backwards to 1492 to see if there could have been a drought going on somewhere in America. A 70 year cycle is probably more consistent with the hanta virus problems. There you need some good weather for a few years to enable the pine nuts to grow to feed the rodents that carry hanta virus. Then all H breaks out! Notice, that takes place WITHIN the 80 year cycle. That's because that cycle, although tracing drought occurrence, is not perfect ~ we don't always have a Great Drought, and we don't always have a smaller drought. It's a period of less than normal rainfall over an enormous part of the continent ~ if it's a Great Drought. There are almost always hotspots within the cycle and it looks like Virginia was a hotspot ~ like Oklahoma was a hotspot in the 1930s Great Drought.

There's an even longer cycle that we know of inferentially. That's where it gets colder in the Northern regions. The traditional lifestyle there is herding animals. Colder weather is dry weather, and grazing lands become scarce so the nomads move South and invade some otherwise civilized place.

They may stay in the area hundreds of years and then when the climate warms up they move back North!

Pretty clearly that's not going to happen these days but it was predictive of the Mongols conquering China and India, and less obviously, of the movement of Turkish speaking Buddhists North out of India all the way to Siberia, and then on to the conquest of Korea and the initiation of a 900 year civil war in Japan!

The Turks have been showing up in both Eastern and Western India for thousands of years ~ apparently driven to do that by climate change.

[muawiyah]

Way back in 1609 THIS WAS THEIR COUNTRY. We fixed that error in 1776

[familyop]

So they took the Cavalier approach to a hardship.

[PghBaldy]

heck, they were eating people in the SuperDome, or so I was told by the media.

[hinckley buzzard]

Well, in extremis, maybe they did. So what?

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Altariel, but I'm not buyin' your alibi. ;) To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[James C. Bennett]

The Donner Party pioneer expedition into California involved cannibalism.

[Vendome]

Something was eating away at them.

[Little Bill]

An example of extreme stupidity, they were warned.

[Ramius]

They should’ve watched “Cannibal! The Musical!”

:-)